On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaudette@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Jul 31, 2009, at 1:13 PM, Brian wrote:
There is further no top down effort to ask the community if they have any good ideas, and then ask the community what they think about the best of those ideas. That, in my view, is a broken system.
Really? Been to the strategic planning wiki lately? There's a whole big section there asking for proposals from the community. :-)
Right. I sympathize with both Brian and Philippe here.
There are those who want the Foundation to take a more active role in facilitating discussion, even from those who are apathetic or shy about discussing policy; they also want the Foundation to make decisions based on thorough community input. They feel that the Foundation is acting on the limited input given, and fooling itself that this is a functional way to survey a broad and underrepresented community.
There are also those who feel the Foundation is open and encouraging public discourse, but there aren't many community members contributing to the discussion. They want the community to take a more active role in discussions and to start new ones where they don't exist, and to be bold with ideas about change; they also want the Foundation to make bold decisions where none has been proposed, and to make steady progress. They feel the community is not very communal, and needs guidance when a complex topic arises to overcome a tendency towards flame wars - or should be left out of discussions requiring expertise altogether.
I am somewhere in-between.
On critical complex topics, the Foundation could benefit from more discussion and better planning. Why have we made it so hard to start new Projects? When did we acquire 8 million dollars in annual upkeep? Where are metrics of site popularity, public citation, and reuse (for all projects, not just Wikipedia) in measures of the Foundation's success? These topics are not generally on the table; occasionally we get PR instead of detailed answers; and regularly people say things such as "I don't post to foundation-l [because it's not a friendly enough environment / it is full of hot air]". If you ever find yourself saying that about a canonical place for discussion of community-wide issues, you've run into a deep problem that you should address publicly and immediately.
On critical planning topics, the community has the ball in its own court -- a healthy foundation, hundreds of thousands of active supporters, worldwide acclaim, and the authority to chart its own course. And so far, many of its good planners are looking elsewhere and saying "I think you have the ball." Perhaps local factions and detailed policy-making have won out over larger-scope planning; perhaps even the most active community members don't realize the position they are in to contribute to long-term discussions -- such as how to define membership, suffrage, community engagement. But if you find yourself spending more time writing eloquent challenges to authority than proposing better solutions, you should stop and consider whether you can just fix what needs fixing.
Sj